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It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.

The Legend of His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?

Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”

A World of Imitators

To be honest, it appears as if the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

The Modern Method Practitioners

The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).

Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’

There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.

A Noble Yet Challenging Fight

Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.